Episode 40: Year A – 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on one detail that’s relevant to apologetics: the keys of the Kingdom of heaven given to Peter, which is found in the Gospel reading for this upcoming 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, taken from Matthew 16:16-20. Many familiar with apologetical discussions know that this detail relates to the Papacy. Many also know that its relevance to the Papacy becomes especially clear when this detail is read within the interpretative context of Isaiah 22:15-22, some of which (vv.19-23) is the first reading for this upcoming Sunday’s Mass. But perhaps what many don’t know is how Protestants counter this parallel in support of the Papacy. That’s the focus of this episode.
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The Sunday Catholic Word
Episode 40
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In this episode, we’re going to focus on one detail that’s relevant to apologetics: the keys of the Kingdom of heaven given to Peter, which is found in the Gospel reading for this upcoming 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, taken from Matthew 16:16-20. For those of you familiar with apologetics, you know this detail relates to the Papacy. You also know its relevance to the Papacy becomes especially clear when this detail is read within the interpretative context of Isaiah 22:15-22, some of which (vv.19-23) is the first reading for this upcoming Sunday’s Mass.
Let’s start with a brief explanation of the connection between the two.
After Jesus reveals that he will make Simon the rock upon which he will build his Church, Jesus tells Simon in Matthew 16:19, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” The key (pun intended) to understand what’s going on here is the “keys of the kingdom.”
The image alludes, so we argue, to an institutional office in the Davidic kingdom known as the Royal Steward or Master of the Palace (Isa. 22:15-22). This official had authority over the king’s household second to none except the king himself, receiving “the key of the house of David” (v.22) to symbolize such authority. He had authority to admit and exclude people from the royal house (“he shall open, and no one shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open”—v.22). He was “a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah” (v.21).
Like the royal steward who received the key of David’s kingdom, Peter is given the keys of Jesus’ kingdom. The authority symbolized by the key of David’s kingdom serves as the backdrop to understand the nature of Peter’s authority symbolized by the keys given to him. Peter is the Royal Steward of Jesus’ kingdom, which is the Church. As such, he is second to none except the King himself, Jesus.
This unique authority is also revealed by the fact that Jesus gives the keys of the kingdom only to Peter. Jesus gives the other apostles the authority to bind and loose (Matt. 18:18). But the absence of the keys is not mere formality. The keys of the kingdom don’t merely represent the Rabbinic authority to bind and loose. Rather, it signifies that Peter is the chief steward who oversees the household of Christ. And there’s only one chief steward.
Now, there are several counter-responses to this argument that Protestants make. We’re going to look at only three here, again, taken from my book Meeting the Protestant Response.
One argument that challenges the parallel between Matthew 16:19 and Isaiah 22:15-22 is that since the relevant images of keys, gates, and doors are not restricted to Isaiah 22:15-22 but are found elsewhere in Scripture, there is no need to explain Matthew 16:19 in light of Isaiah 22:15-22. Protestant apologist Steve Hays states the argument this way:
Catholic apologists typically allege that v.19 is an allusion to Isaiah 22:22, then imports the entire Isaian context into v. 19. However, the related metaphors of keys, gates, and doors are stock imagery (e.g. Matt. 23:13; 25:10; Luke 11:52; John 10:9; Acts 14:27; 1 Cor. 16:9; Col. 4:3; Rev. 1:18; 3:7-8,20; 9:1; 20:1), so it doesn’t require any special explanation, in terms of literary dependence, to account for the imagery.[i]
Let’s look at some different ways that we can respond.
For Hays, the image of keys (along with doors and gates) shouldn’t be taken as having a “literary dependence” on Isaiah 22:22, since such imagery is also used elsewhere in Scripture. Hays seems to be basing his argument on the idea that to the extent a given image is used in Scripture, the less likely it is that there is direct literary dependence.
This is generally true, although sometimes there are exceptions. For example, the phrase “in the beginning,” occurs numerous times in Scripture.[ii] Yet all competent scholars agree that John 1:1 (“in the beginning was the Word”) involves a deliberate callback to Genesis 1:1. But the corollary to this principle is that the fewer times an image occurs, especially when it’s found prior to its current use, the more likely it is that there’s literary dependence. And that supports reading Matthew 16:19 in light of Isaiah 22:22. Far from being a “stock image,” the metaphor of a key is found in only one place in the Old Testament: Isaiah 22:22.
Furthermore, in these two passages, the metaphor of the key is used in very similar circumstances. Consider, for example, the parallel imagery of the “kingdom.” Isaiah 22:22 speaks of the “house of David,” which is just another way of saying the “kingdom of David.” Also, the parallel theme of having the authority to admit and exclude connects the two passages. This is signified by the “binding and loosing” language in Matthew 16:19 and the “opening and shutting” language in Isaiah 22:22: “He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open”.
Given that Isaiah 22:22 is the only text written before Matthew that has such a degree of similarity to Matthew 16:19, it is most likely meant to form part of the conceptual background that Matthew is drawing on. Even Protestant scholars affirm this interpretation. W.F. Albright and C.S. Mann write,
Isaiah 22:15 ff. undoubtedly lies behind this saying [Matt. 16:19]. The keys are the symbol of authority, and Roland de Vaux (Ancient Israel, tr. By John McHugh [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961], pp.129ff) rightly sees here the same authority as that vested in the vizier, the master of the house, the chamberlain, of the royal household in ancient Israel.[iii]
Another response to Hays’s objection is that none of the New Testament passages that he cites prove that Isaiah 22:22 isn’t what Jesus has in mind. If anything, the question raised is, “How many of these other passages are also drawing on Isaiah 22?”
Clearly, at least one of them: Revelation 3:7-8, which reads, “And to the angel of the Church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens.’” This doesn’t conflict with Matthew 16:18 because Jesus, the one who holds the keys of his kingdom in virtue of being the king, is free to entrust the keys of his kingdom to whomever he wishes.
The other New Testament passages cited by Hays are even more problematic. Some, for example, refer to what is clearly a different key than the key of David’s kingdom:
- Luke 11:52 refers to the “key of knowledge.”
- Revelation 1:18 refers to “the keys of death and Hades.”
- Revelation 9:1 and 20:1 refer to the key to “the bottomless pit.”
Remember, the question is not whether keys can refer to different concepts—of course they can. Rather, the question is whether the key imagery in Matthew 16:19 is drawing from Isaiah 22:22. And the mere fact that key imagery refers to different things elsewhere in the New Testament doesn’t help us answer that question. The key imagery in Matthew 16:19 could very well be referring to the same underlying concept as that of Isaiah 22:22 even though other New Testament verses use different key metaphors.
We can use a similar line of reasoning in response to other passages that Hays cites, passages that involve doors rather than keys. None of these instances of door imagery come close to the door motif connected with the house/kingdom of David. They all refer to different things:
- Matthew 25:10—the door to the wedding feast in heaven
- Acts 14:27—a door of faith that God opened for the Gentiles
- Colossians 4:3—a door for the word of God to be spread
- Revelation 3:20—a door to enter into table fellowship with Jesus
Like we saw with key imagery, the question is not whether door imagery can refer to different things. The question is whether the door/gate imagery implied by the keys in Matthew 16:19 refers to the same underlying concept as that of Isaiah 22:22. The mere fact that door imagery is used for different concepts elsewhere in the New Testament does nothing for us as to arriving at an answer.
One passage Hays cites does have some superficial conceptual similarity to the passages of interest: Matthew 23:13, where Jesus says, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.” Despite there being no mention of a key or a door, the theme of being excluded from the kingdom, along with a concept of inherited authority, provides some grounds for at least a loose connection with Matthew 16:19 and Isaiah 22:22.
However, in Matthew 23, the authority the scribes and Pharisees have inherited doesn’t come from David. Rather, it comes from Moses. Thus, in 23:2, Jesus observes that they “sit on Moses’ seat.” This is a different source of authority, not related to the Davidic authority that Jesus possesses as the messianic Son of David, and which he shares with Peter.
The next comeback charges the Catholic position with arbitrarily picking and choosing the relevant details from Isaiah 22:15-22 to justify a papal interpretation of Matthew 16:19. Jason Engwer puts it this way:
[A]ny Catholic appeal to Isaiah 22 would have to be a partial appeal, not a complete parallel, since a complete parallel wouldn’t favor the claims of Roman Catholicism. God is the one who gives the key in Isaiah 22, so an exact parallel would put Jesus in the place of God, not in the place of the king. If Jesus is God and Peter is the prime minister, then who is the king? Some church official with more authority than Peter? What about Isaiah 22:25? Should we assume that popes can “break off and fall,” and that the keys of Matthew 16 can eventually pass to God himself (Rev. 3:7) rather than to a human successor? If Catholics only want to make a general appeal to Isaiah 22, without drawing an exact parallel, then how can they claim that papal authority is implied by the parallel?[iv]
Elsewhere, he gives a few other examples:
[H]ow do you allegedly know that . . . the prime minister role must be fulfilled only by Peter rather than by Peter along with the other apostles or some such thing? How do you know that the prime minister role in the New Testament era isn’t better than its Old Testament counterpart by not requiring any successors (e.g., Peter’s foundational work in building the church is sufficient and requires no succession, much as Jesus’ work as high priest requires no succession)?[v]
Engwer argues that for the parallel between Matthew 16:19 and Isaiah 22:22 to imply papal authority there must be an exact parallel between the relevant details. But this is an unreasonable demand because that’s not how prophetic foreshadowing or intertextuality works. The New Testament authors themselves don’t even honor Engwer’s principle.
Consider, for example, Matthew 2:15’s reference to Hosea 11. The first two verses of Hosea 11 read as follows:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols (vv.1-2).
Matthew takes the phrase “out of Egypt I called my son” in the first statement as a prefigurement of baby Jesus’ return from the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:15). Yet, Matthew did not intend the latter part of the passage to refer to Jesus, since Jesus did not go away from God, sacrifice to the Baals, and burn incense to their images.
There are numerous similar examples in the New Testament’s use of the Old. Whenever prophetic foreshadowing is in play, some elements foreshadow and some don’t. There are continuities and discontinuities. If the New Testament authors employ this type of hermeneutic when relating the Old Testament to the New, it’s legitimate for Catholics to do the same.
How do we know what applies and what doesn’t in these partial parallels? Sometimes the answer is found in other things Scripture teaches. For example, we know that the two figures of God and king both apply to Jesus because the New Testament reveals that Jesus is both, at the same time, God (by virtue of his divine nature) and heir to the throne of David (by virtue of his human nature—Luke 1:32).
Regarding the detail about the sure peg giving way (Isa. 22:25), Jesus says that the Church he builds on Peter, the rock, will withstand the onslaught of the forces of evil: “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). If the gates of Hades will not prevail against Jesus’ Church, and the Church is built on Peter, then surely the image of the peg giving way doesn’t apply to Peter (and by way of extension to his successors). Unlike the foundation of the house of David that will give way, the foundation of Christ’s house, or kingdom, will not.
We know that the royal steward role belongs to Peter alone because Jesus gives only Peter the keys of the kingdom. And only after promising to give Peter the keys does Jesus reveal that the other apostles can corporately participate in the authority of the keys by “binding and loosing” (Matt. 18:18). And in response to Engwer’s last question, we know that that Peter would not be the only royal steward because his job was not to build the Church—Jesus had that job: “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18)—but rather to govern it. And since the Church is promised to exist until the end of time, there’s going to be a need for other royal stewards to govern it beyond Peter.
The next Protestant comeback attempts to undermine the parallel between Matthew 16:19 and Isaiah 22:22 by highlighting the difference between the key (singular) in Isaiah 22:22 and the keys (plural) in Matthew 16:19. James White makes this argument in his book The Roman Catholic Controversy:
[U]pon what basis do we identify the keys (plural, Greek: κλειδας [kleidas]) of the kingdom of heaven, which are associated plainly with the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, with the key (singular, Greek: κλειν [klein] as cited in Rev. 3:7 . . .) of the house of David, which is messianic in nature? And should we not instead accept the interpretation given by the Lord Jesus himself, when he cites Isaiah 22:22 of himself in Revelation 3:7, “And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia write: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this.” Jesus has, present tense (Greek: ὁ ἔχων [ho echōn]), the key of David. He does not say that he gives this key to anyone else.[vi]
White’s issue about Jesus possessing the “key of David” (Rev. 3:7) poses no threat to a papal argument from the “keys of the kingdom,” since Catholics affirm that Jesus is the Davidic king and that the key belongs to him by right. This being the case, he can bestow it upon whomever he chooses.[vii]
The real question is whether the key of David in Isaiah 22:22, and its relevant context concerning the office of the royal steward, serves as an interpretative context for the keys of the kingdom in Matthew 16:19. White says no, in part because one is singular and the other is plural.
We already gave reasons to think that Isaiah 22:22 and its context serve as an interpretive context for Matthew 16:19. Beyond those, there are a few ways that we can show why this argument fails.
First, it should be noted that White’s difficulty with the singular and plural distinction is a minority view among Protestant scholars.[viii] For example, the late Evangelical Protestant biblical scholar F.F. Bruce writes,
And what about the “keys of the kingdom”? The keys of a royal or noble establishment were entrusted to the chief steward or major domo; he carried them on his shoulder in earlier times, and there they served as a badge of the authority entrusted to him. About 700 B.C. an oracle from God announced that this authority in the royal palace in Jerusalem was to be conferred on a man called Eliakim: “I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open” (Isa. 22:22). So in the new community that Jesus was about to build, Peter would be, so to speak, chief steward.[ix]
As we saw in the Hosea example above, there are other examples in which New Testament authors interpret an event in light of an Old Testament text without an exact one-to-one match of every detail. That one passage says “key” and the other “keys” does not mean Matthew couldn’t have been doing likewise in this case.
Indeed, an interpretative principle that would demand an exact one-to-one match of every detail would lead to absurdities, even for a Protestant. Consider how Revelation 3:7 says that Jesus has the “key of David.” As White argues above, this is a clear reference to Isaiah 22:22. Must we conclude that Jesus is not the Davidic king but merely the royal steward, since it was the royal steward who was given the “key of the house of David” (Isa. 22:22)?
If White is able to interpret Revelation 3:7 in light of Isaiah 22:22 without an exact match of details, then so can Catholics when it comes to interpreting Matthew 16:19.
Well, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A gives us an opportunity to focus on apologetical discussions surrounding the Peter and the Papacy.
As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well. Also, if you’re interested in getting some cool mugs and stickers with my logo, “Mr. Sunday podcast,” go to shop.catholic.com.
I hope you have a blessed 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time.
[i] Hays, “Catholic Prooftexts.”
[ii] See Gen. 1:1; Ezra 4:6; Prov. 20:21; Wis. 14:6; Sir. 15:14, 24:9, 36:15, Jer. 26:1, 27:1, 49:34; Amos 7:1; Phil. 4:15; Heb. 1:10.
[iii] W.F. Albright and C.S. Mann, Matthew, The Anchor Yale Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), 196.
[iv] Jason Engwer, “Does Combining Isaiah 22 with Matthew 16 Lead Us to a Papacy?,” Triablogue, August 23, 2006, http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/08/does-combining-isaiah-22-with-matthew.html.
[v] Jason Engwer, “Re: The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail [Blog Comment],” Triablogue, August 30, 2017, http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-gates-of-hell-shall-not-prevail.html?showComment=1504144283696#c6591148820319584669.
[vi] White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, 249, footnote 18.
[vii] See A.S. Wood, “Key,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revise, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979-1988), 10-11.
[viii] For a list of these scholars, see Dave Armstrong, Biblical Proofs for an Infallible Church and Papacy (Dave Armstrong, 2012), 126-136.
[ix] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F.F. Bruce, and Manfred T. Brauch, Hard Sayings in the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 385.